By the late 1800's
Oshkosh's main industry was woodworking. There were lumber mills; sash, door and
blind factories; furniture factories; and other woodworking plants. It was big business and the mill owners
were becoming extremely rich. But, they were doing so off the labor of severely
underpaid workers. The workers were paid as little as a dollar a day for a ten
hour workday at a job that was considered skilled labor. Women and boys were paid even less for the same amount of work.Some made as little as forty cents a day. The mills had recruited workers
directly from Europe to toil in their factories.

In 1898, industrial
employment in Oshkosh was about 5,000 out of a total population of about 28,000.
Employment in the seven large woodworking factories was about 2,200. The
Paine Lumber Co. employed the most at 768, Morgan Co. had 350 employees,
McMillen Co. had about 300, Williamson and Libbey had 200 employees, The
Forster-Haffner Co. about 200, The Gould Co. about 150 and The Radford Co.
approximately 200. These factories were only the door, sash and blind factories,
not the furniture factories.

Paine Lumber Mill circa 1916.

Hauling Logs out of the Northern forests.

Some men would
work in the Northern forests during the winter when the mills were closed.
Some immigrants went straight to Aniwa, Shawano and other logging
communities. The trees would be cut during the winter and then in the
spring the logs would be floated down the Wolf River. The logs would be
branded so at the other end the sorters would know what log went to what
mill. The logs would then be tied together in large rafts and sent to the right
mill. This work could not happen in the winter because the rivers and
lakes would freeze.

Relations between
management and labor were horrendous in the mills, mainly because of the actions
of George Paine of the Paine Lumber Co. He considered laborers to be
objects and not people. The companies had been reducing
wages for years and were replacing men with women and children. By 1898 the workers
were
ready to demand an improvement in working conditions and pay. They joined
the Amalgamated Woodworkers Union.

The union drafted a list
of terms including:

1)25% pay increase with a minimum of $1.50 a day.

2)An end to the employment of women.

3)Recognition of the union.

4)Regular weekly pay days.

(Although there was a law that said factory workers were
to be paid weekly, the mill owners ignored it and it was not enforced.)

The mill owners met to
discuss the demands and failed to act. That Monday, May 16, 1898 the workers
went on strike. Thirteen hundred workers stayed home that day but the mills
continued to operate with small crews. The mills they struck were The Paine
Lumber Company, The R. McMillan Co., The Radford Brothers Co., The Williamson
and Libbey Co., The Forster-Haffner Co., The Morgan Co. and the Gould Co.

These mills were sash, door and blind factories. The furniture, box, and other
woodworking plants were not part of the strike.

Thomas L. Kidd, the
Secretary of the Amalgamated Woodworkers Union, came in to handle the strike. He
told the press that the manufacturers had provoked the strike by refusing to
talk to the union. He ordered that the strikers would not be permitted to
congregate on the street.He did
not want public opinion to go against the strikers.

The strike continued for
the week without incident. The Gould Co. closed up shop because of an inadequate
crew. The next week Samuel Gompers, the head of The American Federation of
Labor, arrived and spoke to the strikers.He
said that the AFL would do what ever was needed to help the strikers. He said
that the conditions and wages of the workers were some of the worst he had ever
seen. The strikers were rejuvenated after his visit and more strikers went on
picket duty.

The strike was peaceful
all through June until the 23rd,when
a crowd gathered outside the Morgan plant and drove away non union workers.
Newspaper reports of the day report that the wives of the strikers were the most
aggressive. They chased workers that tried to enter the plant and threw eggs and
stones and clubbed the men with three and four foot long boards.

There were incidents at other plants and the most serious incident was at the McMillen plant were James
Morris, a sixteen year old striker, was hit in the head during a battle and killed. Plant
engineer Edward Casey was identified as the man that had hit the boy in the
head with a club. He was later found not guilty. On June 26th there was a large public funeral for their fallen
comrade. There was a procession of 1300 mourners from the Turner Hall and
St. Peter's Church to Riverside Cemetery.

The violence led to the
calling in of the National Guard. They set up position at the Morgan plant with
gatling guns. There was no violence after that.

By June 27th the workers
at the McMillen Co. accepted a minor improvement in wages and went back to work.

The other mill owners
decide to close their mills voluntarily until the men were willing to return to
work. The strike dragged on through July.
In early August several mills reopened with limited crews but no union men. Many
of the strikers were having a very hard time providing for their families.
They
never did make much of a living wage to begin with and now with the limited
strike pay they received, many men left the city to take jobs elsewhere. Some men went to work at another sash, door and blind factory in Muscatine, Iowa. Some of the jobs were paying twice as much as the Oshkosh woodworking jobs. It
is amazing that any of the strikers stayed in Oshkosh and endured the strike and
the lousy wages their old jobs paid.

In mid to late August the
strike ended and all workers went back to work, with no company making any
concessions to the original demands. The wages were still the lowest in the
industry and remained so for years after. Children continued to be employed in
the mills and the state did nothing to enforce child labor laws.

George Paine convinced
prosecutors to arrest Kidd for conspiracy to hurt the business of the Paine
Lumber Co. Kidd hired the prominent lawyer, Clarence Darrow to defend him.

Clarence Darrow took the
case because he believed that this was not an ordinary case of conspiracy, but a
larger issue involving the rights of workers to withhold work and that the
future of labor rested on the outcome. His summation was brilliant and had a
lasting effect on the labor movement. He spoke without notes and it lasted for
seven and one half hours. Kidd was found not guilty.